


Fate-Touched

by Jaelijn



Series: Whumptober [3]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Friendship or Pre-Slash, Gen, Precognition, Set shortly after "Breakdown" and "Bounty", Tarot, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27025222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Being fate-touched hadn’t seemed so hellish when he was a boy. Sure, it had seemed fanciful and antiquated, ill-fitting to his life built around technology and computer logic, but it had just been a thing, like a birthmark, a fact of his life that existed, but that didn’t affect him much at all. His foreknowledge was just vague enough that he didn’t worry about it at every turn, nor did he really bother to look for Fate.Until he met Blake, and the vagueness snapped into crystal-like clarity.Written for Whumptober 2020 and the prompt #15: "Into the Unknown: Possession | Magical Healing | Science Gone Wrong" (primarily inspired by "Into the Unknown")
Relationships: Kerr Avon & Vila Restal
Series: Whumptober [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951792
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Fate-Touched

**Author's Note:**

> I got a bit... distracted by other things (so much so that I missed the posting date for another fic in this series that I have written, which will now have to come later), but I haven't abandoned these Whumptober fics! This one features a return of my fanciful "Avon grew up on Io" headcanon that I enjoy playing with every once in a while. I am really fond of this fic.
> 
> Thanks to [foreignobjecticus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignobjecticus/pseuds/foreignobjecticus) for beta and test reading this one!

Being fate-touched hadn’t seemed so hellish when he was a boy. Sure, it had seemed fanciful and antiquated, ill-fitting to his life built around technology and computer logic, but it had just been a thing, like a birthmark, a fact of his life that existed, but that didn’t affect him much at all. His foreknowledge was just vague enough that he didn’t worry about it at every turn, nor did he really bother to look for Fate.

Until he met Blake, and the vagueness snapped into crystal-like clarity.

Until the fact transformed into a curse.

Avon didn’t want to die a violent death. He didn’t want to be a murderer. He didn’t want to take everyone who might still mean something down with him.

He begun to fight Fate.

Seeing XK-72 go up in an explosion, instantly deadened by the cold vacuum of space, was despair-inducing.

“Say goodbye to one bolt hole,” he murmured, thinking of all the avenues of escape he had already tried before this one, of all the other doors that had already slammed shut in his face.

“That’s not funny, Avon,” said Blake, the bane of his existence.

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

And it wasn’t. They went back to running, of course, or as Blake liked to call it, _fighting the Federation_ , but Avon knew that every single step he took at Blake’s side was moving him closer to a fate he didn’t want.

He couldn’t raise it with anyone on board, of course. None of them had the faintest idea that he wasn’t _quite_ a native of Earth, and what Io did to people who were born there – possibly still did, even though the terraforming had advanced by leaps and bounds since Avon had been born. They would have thought him mad.

He was seated at his console, trying to work out yet another escape plan and half-heartedly keeping an eye on the systems while they were making their way from Lindor into open space. Vila was sharing his watch, lounging about on the sofa, and his ceaseless card-shuffling was slowly but surely getting on Avon’s nerves.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Vila looked back at him with mock hurt plastered onto his expression. “Just laying out me cards, old man. It’s never done any harm.”

“ _Laying out_ your cards?”

Vila waved an expansive hand at the table before him. “Never heard of tarot, have you?”

Avon had, of course. Matters of Fate, even those rooted in Old Calendar Earth nonsense, were necessary reading for any native Ioan. Avon’s own interest in games of chance was probably rooted in that same reading. “ _You_ can read tarot?”

Vila shrugged. “Sure, in a small way. It’s an old tradition in the Delta section, a neat trick to make some money off gullible higher grades, no offence. Sarkoff gave me a pretty little deck, a genuine antique.”

For some reason, Sarkoff had found Vila _charming_. It was almost as incomprehensible as Tyce’s fascination with Blake.

Avon abandoned his fruitless planning and joined Vila at the sofa. The deck was, indeed, a nice one, though decidedly well-thumbed. Avon would never have agreed to a genuine game of cards with it; Vila had far too keen an eye for markings on card backs.

“Well? Do your cards tell you how to become rich and immortal?”

Vila made a face at his mocking tone and scooped up the cards he’d haphazardly thrown onto the table. “I was just toying around.” He began another shuffle. “But I could do a read for real, just for you.”

“Do you think I’m a fool? With a deck like this, you’ll pick precisely which cards you want to show me. Besides, it’s superstitious nonsense.”

“Well, I can’t do anything about the nonsense, but I don’t pull any card tricks on tarot. It’s no fun if it isn’t fate.”

Avon shuddered at the word, feeling a tug at his strings. As luck would have it, Vila interpreted his reaction as disgust and pouted.

Perversely, that was what made Avon say: “All right, do a reading for me. At worst, I’ll learn something about how you cheat at cards.”

Vila perked up and began shuffling the cards in earnest. “How many do you want?”

“Three seems appropriate.”

“Past, present and future, eh?”

“As you like.”

Vila put the cards through a decidedly non-mystical riffle shuffle, then held the squared deck out to him. “Give us a shuffle, then.”

The cards felt pleasing to the touch, softened by use. With a partner less prone to cheating, they might have made for a good game. Avon shuffled carefully, trying to keep his mind blank. Perhaps there was irony in being fate-touched and turning one’s nose up at superstition, but Avon couldn’t see how a deck of cards in the hands of a Delta thief should be of any aid to him.

He passed the deck back to Vila, who shuffled a final time, placed the deck down the table, cut it to the left and began to lay out the cards. First was the middle card, the present, then the left, the past, and finally the right, the future.

When it was done, heavy silence settled over the flight deck.

Avon felt like laughing but settled for a bitter sneer. Vila glanced at him and away immediately, as if embarrassed.

“Avon,” he began at length. “Do you know what the cards mean?”

“Well enough.”

The Nine of Swords, his past – guilt and grief and regret. The Devil, his present – becoming trapped and bound, subjected to a bleak outlook. And finally, the Eight of Swords, and his future – the ultimate inescapable situation, powerless to free himself, every escape thwarted. It was a fitting spread for a fate-touched.

Vila grimaced uncomfortably. “Look, it’s just… a card game, right?” he said, a fake light lilt to his voice. “Like you said. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, of course not.”

Vila sobered up instantly at his tone. “Avon… I’ve _never_ seen a spread this bleak.”

Avon met his gaze, scanning Vila’s worried expression, and debated whether he should tell him, and if he did, just how much. “What do you know about Ioans, Vila?” he asked at last.

Vila tilted his head quizzically. “Eh? Nothing much. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I am about to tell you something, but if you ever breathe a word of it to anyone without my explicit say-so, I _will_ kill you. Do you understand?”

Vila looked taken aback but nodded. “Fine, I give you my word. Mind you, I might not have a chance about it if the Federation get at me.”

Avon knew what Vila’s dying gasp would sound like. He grinned bitterly. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”

“What do you know? What is going on, Avon?”

“I was born on Io. I only lived there for about five years before we emigrated to Earth, but the damage was done when my mother carried me to term there. Io-born people are fate-touched.”

Vila was looking at him as if he’d gone mad. “What does that mean?”

“We are limited precogs, capable of interpreting the strands of our own fate.”

“But Avon… precognition doesn’t exist.”

Avon laughed and waved a hand at the tarot spread before them. “Tell that to your cards.”

“But it’s all fake! It’s just chance, a game!”

Vila made to swipe away the cards, but Avon clamped his hand sharply about the thief’s wrist. “Ioan precognition _isn’t_. The fate-touched have predicted major milestones in their lives with 98% accuracy. There is some variation, of course, in the extent of the precognition, but unlike for Earth people’s precognitive dreams and such nonsense, there _is_ scientific evidence. It’s real enough. Do you think I would pay any attention to it if there _weren’t_? You know me better than that.”

“All right, so you know what’s going to happen? Why don’t you use it, then, eh? I could do without being shot at by pursuit ships or captured by bounty hunters! Why…” Vila shook his hand free and looked over the cards. “Why do you feel trapped?”

“What do _you_ think? You saw XK-72 go up in flames as well as I did.”

“But you must have known that would happen!”

“No, I didn’t. I told you, Ioans are _limited_ precogs. I was trying to prevent what I _do_ know by leaving.”

Vila scoffed and climbed to his feet. “Blake’s getting us all killed? That’s not precognition. Even I can predict that! You’ve had your fun, Avon; the joke’s up.”

Avon stayed where he was, fixing the thief with his gaze. “ _All_ humans can predict the future with reasonable accuracy, it’s called reasoning from cause to effect. It’s _not_ the same thing. And Blake isn’t going to get us killed. _I_ am.”

Vila stared at him in something close to open-mouthed shock. “All of us? Jenna, Cally, Gan, Blake, and me?”

Avon shook his head, trying to rid himself of the images that had become so clear since he’d met Blake. “I don’t know about Jenna, Cally and Gan. You and Blake…”

“But how!? And why?! Avon, you can’t just tell me you’re going to kill me and not give me any details! And if you know, why don’t you _stop_ it!?”

“I said, I will get you killed, not _kill you_! And what do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Avon rested his hand heavily on the table, by the cards, though he would rather have slammed it. “It _isn’t_ that simple.”

Vila’s eyes darted over the spread again. “ _Can_ you stop it?” he asked, his voice suddenly small.

“Does it look likely?” Avon picked up the Eight of Swords and flung it at Vila’s feet. “You tell me.”

He abandoned his watch then, leaving Vila alone on the flight deck. He wasn’t sure what he had hoped to gain by telling Vila the truth, except perhaps that a second perspective was sometimes helpful – but Vila, of course, had barely believed him, and once he did believe him, had panicked entirely.

It was far too close to Avon’s own despair over his fate. As much as he had known that precognition was real enough, he hadn’t really believed in _predetermination_. He had thought that it would be his choices, naturally leading to what he knew as his fate. He hadn’t expected to be fighting Fate every step of the way and losing.

He was in his cabin, nursing a drink and a building headache, when his door hissed open.

“Don’t you know how to knock?” Avon spat at the entering Vila.

“I didn’t think you’d let me in, so I picked the lock.” Vila slipped his picks back into his jacket and let the door close behind him. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Really.”

Vila scuttled close to the table and claimed the second chair, tossing something on the table between them. It was a tarot card – the Eight of Swords. “About the cards. Because they’re never supposed to be entirely dark. Even Death is hardly ever about, you know, dying.”

“If you came here to give me a lecture on tarot, you can leave again. I’m not interested, Vila.”

“No, but don’t you see – the Eight of Swords, look at it.”

Too tired to fight, Avon decided to indulge him and gave the card a more than cursory glance. It was beautiful artwork, but the central picture remained a figure in heavy restraint, hopelessly enclosed, the atmosphere no less impressive for being beautifully rendered.

It was not an image he liked to associate with himself, but it struck a chord far too intimately, all the same. “Well, I’m looking.”

“And what do you see?”

“A figure unable to escape.”

“Alone.”

“What?”

“The figure is alone.”

“Yes,” Avon hazarded, disturb by the sudden brilliant gleam in Vila’s eyes.

“Suppose they weren’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Suppose the figure wasn’t alone. Suppose they had a friend.”

“But they don’t.”

Vila laid his palm over the card, hiding it from view. “Not in the card. But that’s only half of what tarot’s all about. The other half’s figuring out what to do with what the cards are saying to you. An’ if I’d be back in the Delta section, pulling an Eight of Swords for some rich Alpha snob, I’d tell them to look for outside help to get them out of a sticky situation, because negative predictions are bad for business.” He leant back in the chair, letting the card vanish with a deft flick of his fingers. “Have you ever mentioned your precognitions to anyone?”

“Of course not! It’s Io’s most well-guarded secret.”

“You’ve been trying it all on your own, then.”

Avon was beginning to see where Vila was going with it all. “Vila…”

“Well, you’ve told me now. And you might have noticed that I have a certain talent for getting in and out of things.”

Avon stared at him and tried not to think of the horrible sound Vila had made as he was dying – would make. “This isn’t tarot, Vila.”

“So what if it isn’t? Were you just going to roll over and let it happen?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then what’s the harm in trying it _with_ me?” 

_What, indeed._ Avon swirled his drink in the glass. “What do you propose, then?”

“We go it together. You tell me what you know, and I’ll help you prevent it.”

“It isn’t that simple, Vila.”

“For you, maybe it isn’t. But perhaps it is for me. We can’t make it worse, can we?”

“Hardly,” Avon agreed and took a deep gulp from his drink. “We may as well try.”

In the morning, when Avon woke to a crystal-clear image of Vila’s face streaked with tears before his mind’s eye, he remembered another card – The Fool, blithely walking off a cliff – and wondered. 


End file.
